I LIVE HERE IN THE UNITED STATES. I WAS CURIOUS ABOUT THE CLOSING CREDITS OF THREE'S COMPANY WHERE IT SAYS "BASED ON MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE". SO I DECIDED TO LOOK IT UP ON THE COMPUTOR NOT ONLY THAT I PURCHASED ALL THE EPISODES TO MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE. THE SHOW IS REALLY FUNNY AND EVEN WATCHING IT OVER AND OVER I NEVER STOP LAUGHING. FOR A FUNNY SHOW LIKE MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE, I THINK THE SHOW SHOULD HAVE RAN A COUPLE OF MORE YEARS BACK THEN. THE SHOW MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE ENDED TOO SOON FOR ME.

Umm. As far as the reporting of such things goes, that ain't bad. No, it doesn't explain how the experiment was controlled, whether the findings were statistically significant, etc -- but when was the last time you saw a newspaper article that did? I fear your problems might well be with the nature of the research than with the Mail's reporting of it, Lex. Me: I'm going to reserve judgement until such time as I've read the article in the JADD (which I might actually do -- it's an area of vague interest to me, that. I could even try to work it into an essay I've written but not yet handed in, but ... no.)

(I mean: as a hack by trade and psychology student by choice, I've just spent a whole day ploughing through research articles and the one thing I can say is that even a 20-page report can miss out salient facts. So although there are myriad holes in that Mail piece, in terms of crunching down a piece of research into a couple of hundred non-academic words, it's pretty fucking good. If it turns out to be misrepresenting the study completely, of course, I shall stand corrected.)

xpost

it seems like...not even the worst kind of health-related fearmongering, because it's too out-there for that

Dude, read the fucking article then. It is based on a piece of potentially valid research.

Researchers showed 100 men with autistic children pictures of curvy women, women with athletic frames and more rounded women and found that they do not have a preference on which figure they find more attractive.

The new research from the University of Bath suggests that fathers of autistic children do not share the preference of men across the world for the curvier woman.

Couldn't the headline have just as easily read "Men who don't find athletic women attractive could father children with autism?"

It could, but the point is that there's cross-cultural support for the curvy stereotype, based on the "ideal" waist-hip ratio of 0.7 (Singh, 1993, I think), so there is a reason for mentioning curves. As you'd know if you'd read the piece (gah, I can't believe I'm sticking up for the Mail).

I mean, why pick on curvy women when the men didn;t state a preference? That's typical DM o_O surely?

Not really, no. For the love of all that is decent, read the piece before you start posting, dudes.

100 men seems like a very small sample size. I'm a bit more worried about the oestrogen/health stuff and this idea the writer seems to have about autism being similar to brain damage and something that crops up randomly when parents have bad health or put bad things into their kids bodies, it's the same logic they use when they reckon autism is caused by MMR and mercury, and that stuff was all bollocks.

Dr Mark Brosnan and Dr Ian Walker from the university's Department of Psychology found that as a group the fathers of autistic children didn't all go for the same figure as their most attractive choice.

Hmmm. I really think we may to read the whole thing. It doesn't seem to be quite as clear cut as the DM is making it.

this idea the writer seems to have about autism being similar to brain damage

Plenty of studies link autism to brain "damage" of some kind; hellfire, one of the most convincing new theories on unipolar depression suggests that's actually linked in some way to a structurally abnormal brain. Plenty of studies link it to all sorts of things. That's the point: there isn't a pathology of autism yet. This is why research exists.

something that crops up randomly when parents have bad health or put bad things into their kids bodies

What evidence are you using for this, anyway? Can you quote the actual text that states this, or are you basing this reading on your own assumptions about how the Daily Mail often presents such stories? (Which, I'll admit, are usually fucking shocking.)

Well, of course it isn't -- this is a very short newspaper article, while (I'd hope!) that what Brosnan and Walker are doing is a tightly controlled experiment. My point, though, is that going "TUT DAILY MAIL HEADLINES WHATEVER NEXT" without actually reading the piece isn't constructive.

Although why I'm wasting time defending the Daily Mail, I really don't know.

one of the most convincing new theories on unipolar depression suggests that's actually linked in some way to a structurally abnormal brain

Actually, I wish I'd not written that because it'll be misconstrued, and I'm falling into my own trap of trying to explain something staggeringly complex using very few words. My fundamental point still stands, though: autism could well be linked (NB: correlation, not causality!) to structural "defects" in the brain.

My. I went off and made some soup there (very nice, since you ask: fennel and potato with lemon, and a gremolata topping) and expected to come back to a minor clusterfuck. Anyway, I should be toiling over an essay, but because I am the KING OF PROCRASTINATION ...

Autism could well be linked (NB: correlation, not causality!) to structural "defects" in the brain

... a little light reading on that subject for anyone who's interested, in no particular order.

Carper, R A Carper and Courchesne, E (2000). Inverse correlation between frontal lobe and cerebellum sizes in children with autism. Brain, 123 (4), 836-844. (Various other Courchesne papers consider a similar hypothesis.)

Wicker, B (2008). New Insights from Neuroimaging into the Emotional Brain in Autism. In E McGregor, M Núñez, K Cebula and J Carlos Gómez (Eds). Autism: An Integrated View from Neurocognitive, Clinical and Intervention Research. Malden, Mass; Oxford: Blackwell. (Actually: if you want to criticise the Brosnan and Walker study for being "quite o_O", I'd suggest you read that entire book first.)

Sparks, B F, and a fucking shitload of others (2002). Brain structural abnormalities in young children with autism spectrum disorder. Neurology, 59, 184-192.

Quite, em, compulsive level of detail there, grimly. I prefer my scaremongering lower on facts, higher on sheer panic, please. Here's Warning over 'third-hand smoke'. Not from the Mail, but it might as well be

I AM BACK. Actually, no, I'm still looking for innovative new ways to not start writing. Drinking BEER has helped. Shit.

As always, the URL is WAY more interesting than the story, which is desperately dull. Filling in the blanks myself, I was hoping for something like: "Man created Barbie and Ken dolls to amuse friends at kinky swinger parties for manic depressives in need of plastic toys to achieve sexual gratification". Which would have been so much better.

I really want to know if those are being generated automatically or not. I shall endeavour to find out.

lol i thought it was a myth that people in the all 'respect' the mail for its vaunted professionalism

A bitter, disillusioned sub writes: while knocking a story into shape last night, I needed to check when a particular dude was knighted, and chanced upon a relevant article from the Mail. Said article spelled said dude's name two different ways in the space of 100 words ...

How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

Remember that Hilaire Belloc cautionary tale - Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes? I used to love it as a child when telling lies was one of the naughtiest things you could do: Matilda ended up getting burned to death.

Good of the Daily Mail to include a clip from Skins, despite it not being mentioned anywhere in the article, for anyone wondering what 'teenage promiscuity' might look like, without having to search for it online themselves.

Regarding the launch day, complaints from viewers on Monday focused on the fact that Susanna's now famous legs - whose pay for the role is £400,000 a year - double that of her former BBC salary - were hidden from view.

One viewer commented: 'Why has ITV paid so much for @susannareid100 only to put her behind a desk? Its like buying a Ferrari and keeping it in the garage #gmb.'

Another wrote: 'You don't hire Susanna Reid and then stick her behind a desk #getyourpinsout #GoodMorningBritain.'

An ex-soldier has been handed a suspended sentence for racially aggravated threatening behaviour towards an amputee gipsy busker who bragged on national TV about 'milking the benefits system'.Viorel Dinu, 25, told Channel 5's Gypsies on Benefits and Proud he and other Romanians had come to the UK because it was a 'soft touch' for scroungers, a court heard.But his boasts caught up with him when former soldier Mark Hawksby, 34, recognised him from the programme after tripping over the busker's money-filled coat on a street in York.